Saying Yes
by NeverDreamsOfMe
Summary: "Did it hurt so because he loved her? Did he really, underneath everything else? He had come very close to saying yes, after all." Basically Todd's thoughts slightly before and at the very end of the finale. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: I do not own Sweeney Todd.

I'm baaaaaaack! :D This is the first of 2 Sweeney fanfics I have kicking around in my head. I actually came up with the other one first, but this one was fresher in my mind. And I was bored during math class so yeah xD Enjoy!

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_A gray fog embraces London once again. It snuggles into the cracks between the buildings and the spaces between the streets like an iron gray kitten settling in for a long nap. The few people out and about hurry from place to place, disliking the weather._

_On Fleet Street, in the room above a particularly famous meat pie shop, stands a man looking out the window. He leans his tall, skinny body into the window, one hand on his hip, the other on the frame. The black mess of his hair is broken by a white streak starting at his right temple. He is dressed simply, but well in a white shirt and a black vest, over all a blue jacket, plain black pants and shoes. Despite his good clothes, he has an odd pallor and expression on his face: a mixture of resentment and grief, giving an overall impression of only being half there. He takes no notice of the half-hidden city below. The people who occasionally cross his line of vision he thinks of as..._

Vermin.

All of them.

I've purged so many.

But how many more?

How many until I get to _him_?

The judge.

It's been so long... and I was so close...

No more.

Next time, I'll get him.

Next time, I _WILL_ have my revenge.

_The door opens, ringing the little bell. He doesn't turn around; he knows who it is._

_"Brought you some breakfast, dear," Mrs. Lovett says cheerfully. He hears the clinking of the china on the tray as it's being set on the table, hears the rustle of her dress as she straightens up again. He sees her briefly in his minds' eye: slender, her dress perhaps dusted in the flour resembling the color of her skin, the wild tangle of her red pigtails. He doesn't turn to eat, doesn't move, doesn't even offer his thanks._

I want the bloody judge.

_"Mr. T, can I ask you a question?"_

Judge's throat exposed.

_"What?" Shortly._

Razor glinting silver.

_"What did your Lucy look like?" The question catches him off guard. He hesitates._

Lucy.

What _did_ she look like?

Oh God, I've forgotten.

_He tries to remember the color of her eyes._

Brown? Blue?

_All he sees are the judge's eyes, colorless and glazed in death._

The death by my own hand.

_"You can't really remember, can you?" Her voice is full of pity._

I can't stand pity.

_"She had yellow hair." Even as he said it he could see it. Lucy's beautiful blonde curls. She was so proud of them. He would sit on the bed, watching her across the room as she brushed them every morning. Always it would make him wonder how someone so beautiful and so good could possibly love him..._

Lucy.

My heart.

_All at once he feels the anguish of her death anew. All the grief and pain comes rushing back. He closes his eyes briefly, the fist on the window closes a little tighter, but otherwise he does not move._

Lucy.

My love.

I _will_ avenge you.

The judge.

_Mrs. Lovett's dress rustles with movement again. "You've got to leave this all behind, you know," she says softly, her voice coming nearer, "She's gone," she whispers at his shoulder like a conscience._

Yes. Gone.

Lost.

Stolen.

All because of _him_.

The judge.

_"Life is for the alive, my dear," her voice is soothing, but he barely notices._

Life?

But I'm barely alive.

The judge.

I'll take what he stole from me.

Life.

Not that it's much.

In his case, anyway.

_Mrs. Lovett was speaking again, "We could have a life, us two. Maybe not like I dreamed, maybe not like you remember. But we could get by."_

_He sighed inwardly._

I don't have the time for this.

Or the patience.

_He turned to tell her absolutely not, but stopped himself when he saw her face. Her expression was open, full of longing and desire._

She's never looked at me like that before...

Has she?

If she has, I'd never noticed.

_For the smallest instant, thoughts of the judge were forgotten. He saw a life without the judge, pain, or grief, with her._

Have I really been so blind?

_Revenge had completely taken over his existance. He had eaten, slept, and plotted revenge for the past fifteen years. His life with Lucy and baby Johanna seemed like they had happened to another person, in quite a different lifetime. __For the second he looked into Mrs. Lovett's eyes, he saw the possibility of another life. She was right; not at all like a dream or a memory, but something certainly better than right now._

I'm sick of this.

I could just forget it all.

And live again.

... Couldn't I?

_It was almost a new thought, like fresh summer air to someone who's been trapped forever in a frigid underground prison. Freedom from his demons, from everything. He had almost opened his mouth to tell her yes when suddenly the door slammed open. The sailor came flying into the room, crying that Johanna was trapped in an asylum._

Perfect!

I've got him now.

_He sprang forward into his new scheme. He told the sailor to spring Johanna, yes, but it was only one part in the chain reaction..._

And I'll have him.

At last.

_What had passed between him and Mrs. Lovett had completely faded from his mind. It was far too late. This was his existance now. Any inkling of a new life was out of the question. But for one moment, he had been tempted by the impossible._

_---_

Oh God.

Oh God.

What have I done?

_He looked into his dead wifes face. He brushed a lock of matted, filthy, once beautiful hair from her forehead._

Dead.

By my own hand.

The blood still stains it.

Oh God.

_"You knew she lived," he whispered. Thinking she had been dead was nothing compared to this._

_"I was only thinkin' of you," she replied, somehow hearing him across the dungeon. Were there tears in her voice? He looked up, the blood of every person he had slaughtered running down his face. He finally saw her for the first time._

_"You _lied_ to me," he said incredulously. Somehow he had thought her somewhat above the people they had so hated. And now..._

She's _one_ of them.

_"No, no, not lied at all," He tuned her out. Her betrayal hurt almost as much as Lucy's true death. He had thought of Mrs. Lovett as - almost - a friend. Not quite a friend, but as least a fellow spirit. Someone he could almost count on. Someone he thought understood him._

_"No, I never lied," Did this hurt so because he loved her? Did he really, underneath everything else? He had come very close to saying yes, after all. He was almost ready to just give up everything for her, in an instant._

_"Lucy," he lamented involuntarily._

No.

_Lucy was his only love. Lucy understood him better than anyone - before. Would she understand him now?_

_"Said she took a poison, she did, never said that she died..."_

She did die.

The same way I did.

Maybe she would - a little.

But not ever.

She's truly dead now.

_"Yes, I lied, 'cause I love you!" He had stood without realizing it. Mrs. Lovett was behind him, crooning about how she pitied his wife, but at the same time how she was so much better. Begging him to love her. Her hypocrisy made him sick._

NO!

No.

Never again.

You can't truely love what you don't understand.

_It was vaguely amusing, killing Mrs. Lovett. He watched with an especially poignant hatred as her eyes shifted from confusion and distrust, to joy and triumph, to the deepest, most primal fear as he threw her into the fire._

The fear of death.

Well, we all die afraid.

_He shut the door, listening to her screams fade and cease altogether. He turned to Lucy's body._

I am not afraid.

_If he had still been a man to believe in a God, he might have comforted himself with a heaven. A paradise in which he and Lucy would be reunited. As he walked to his dead wife and lifted her still, pale, dirty face into his lap, all he thought of death was..._

A respite.

A permanent rest from a pointless existance.

I worked so hard.

Only to find that it was all for nothing.

I was so blind.

_He sensed the boy behind him, murderously angry._

Wouldn't want to disappoint him.

_He raised his head, offering his neck. For a painful moment the boy just_ stood _there._

Do it.

_Do_ it.

_DO IT!_

He _will_ do it.

Won't he?

Or does he have something else in mind?

Nothing could be worse.

The only thing worse than death is living.

I know this better than anyone.

Just k-

_The razor slid across his throat, as caressing and fatal as a lover's kiss. He slumped forward, his life dripping onto Lucy's face, and ran down across her eyes: the blindfold of blood her husband had worn all these years._

_---_

Thanks for reading; please review!


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